I Was His White Rose
by Xaviera Xylira
Summary: I am so sorry. I really, really am.


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A/N: So. Harry/Ginny, but not one word of anything magical or any names are mentioned in the fic. It's rather sad. This is what happens when I listen to Sarah Mclachlan all day. Flame if you want, but I won't go away. Mistakes are all Snowlily's fault. *grin* I had to throw that in. But don't worry, Lils. No one reads the A/N anyway. _This has absolutely nothing at all to do with my poem, White Rose. It simply bears the same title. _

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Disclaimer: Please. Let's be realistic, people. 

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White Rose

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Things go so terribly wrong and no one can stop them from happening. I never planned on any of this happening. I never planned on getting involved with all of this. 

I never planned on falling in love with him. 

And I never planned on him leaving me so soon, either. 

I looked in front of me at the tombstone that lies erected in the cold earth. It's alone, concealed by the silent composure of a weeping willow: a sorrow tree. Five years of rain and harsh weather hasn't had much effect on the sturdy stone; good money had been spent to make sure of that. I only wished that the letters hadn't been chiseled in so perfectly, so precisely, so irrevocably bold. I hate the way the words glare out at me. They remind me that he's gone. 

I don't know why I came here. I don't know why I bother anymore. I don't know why I still feel so empty inside after all this time. 

It started to rain. The cold drops of water fell through the wispy branches of the willow and made little dark spots on the gray of the tombstone. I used to love the rain. He would always lead me outside by the hand and dance with me as the tears of heaven's angels fell around us. He would say that they were weeping for the beauty that smiled at him, because she was so lovely that it enchanted even the hearts of the above.

The beauty that smiled at him was me. 

I hate the rain now. And as it fell onto my hair and dampened it, I willed myself not to curse out loud at the irony that it should fall at that moment, at that time when I was standing there. And it began to fall harder. 

If I think hard enough, I can still see him with my eyes open, and he looks real and touchable, not like the blurry mirage that my mind creates in the dreams that I have where I'm trying to find him. He looks so much like the man I loved. 

Like the man I still love. 

I haven't cried since the day I found out he was dead. I cried more than anyone else in the world that day, and for all the rivers of tears that everyone watched me cry, there were oceans of tears screaming inside me. I didn't cry at his funeral. No one even noticed I was there. And I haven't cried over him or anything else since then. 

In a way, his death has helped me grow. I no longer believe that there is a happily ever after. His death has awakened me to the harsh truth of reality, and though it scars and burns my soul and whatever is left of my heart, I welcome it, because it reminds me that he isn't coming back and there is nothing I can do to change that, and that is something that I need reminding of. 

I can't remember the last time I smiled. 

Sometimes I frighten myself. I look in the mirror once in a while, and though I look youthful still, for it has only been five years that have seemed like fifty, my eyes are so empty. They stare out at me from the glass unblinking and I sometimes wonder if I'm dead and just wandering the earth as a lost spirit. 

That's what I feel like. A lost spirit. One without any hope for returning to life or heading to a world beyond it.

I wanted to throw myself down at his gravestone and pound at it, screaming at him for leaving me when there was so much of a future for us. He said we were destined to be together. Now what? Were we destined to be apart, too? Was he destined to die while I was left here to bear it all? 

Instead I stared at it, with no emotion at all on my face. It was still raining, and the sky was gray, and the long branches of the willow shivered and whispered to each other things deeper than any human can hope to understand. It was lonely there, under that tree. It was so cold and lonely, and I wondered if he would have wanted it like that. 

I had never brought any flowers on the days I came here, yet I saw the wilting remnants of white roses at the base of that great slab of rock. I almost smiled. So I am not the only one who still remembers. Still cares. 

In a sudden blast of wind, a rose was loosened from the bundle and flew up into the air. As it whipped past me, I reached up and caught it, almost on impulse it seemed. And then I stared at it wonderingly, for it was the only rose that had not wilted, and it was the only rose that had thorns. 

I held the flower in one hand while with the other I touched a petal, and a drop of crimson blood fell onto the white and ran smoothly down the side. Well, all thorns pierce the skin. I would have been a fool to think that these were any different. 

White roses. Now I remembered. White rose. That's what he called me. He said I was a white rose with thorns because I was so beautiful and graceful, yet so snappish and spiteful at times. But I was his white rose and he loved me, and that's what kept me from wilting. 

I am neither beautiful nor spiteful now. 

I am only lost and desperate with longing. 

I dropped the rose. 

The blood dripped onto the white petals that lay at my feet. 

His love kept me from wilting. 

He's dead now. 

I bent down and carefully picked up the slender, blood-splattered rose. Not one petal had fallen. 

He is dead, but his love still lives. 

I folded the rose to my heart, turned around and walked away from the harshness of the tombstone. The rain still fell in a constant shower, gently but firmly, like a mother admonishing a young boy. And I welcomed the angel's tears back into my life. 

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End file.
